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The Ideal Principles entering into Matter as to a Mother [to
be "born into the Universe"] affect it neither for better nor for
worse.
Their action is not upon Matter but upon each other; these powers
conflict with their opponent principles, not with their
substrata- which it would be foolish to confuse with the entrant
forms- Heat [the Principle] annuls Cold, and Blackness annuls
Whiteness; or, the opponents blend to form an intermediate
quality. Only that is affected which enters into combinations:
being affected is losing something of self-identity.
In beings of soul and body, the affection occurs in the body,
modified according to the qualities and powers presiding at the
act of change: in all such dissolution of constituent parts, in
the new combinations, in all variation from the original
structure, the affection is bodily, the Soul or Mind having no
more than an accompanying knowledge of the more drastic changes,
or perhaps not even that. [Body is modified: Mind knows] but the
Matter concerned remains unaffected; heat enters, cold leaves it,
and it is unchanged because neither Principle is associated with
it as friend or enemy.
So the appellation "Recipient and Nurse" is the better
description: Matter is the mother only in the sense indicated; it
has no begetting power. But probably the term Mother is used by
those who think of a Mother as Matter to the offspring, as a
container only, giving nothing to them, the entire bodily frame
of the child being formed out of food. But if this Mother does
give anything to the offspring it does so not in its quality as
Matter but as being an Ideal-Form; for only the Idea is
generative; the contrary Kind is sterile.
This, I think, is why the doctors of old, teaching through
symbols and mystic representations, exhibit the ancient Hermes
with the generative organ always in active posture; this is to
convey that the generator of things of sense is the Intellectual
Reason Principle: the sterility of Matter, eternally unmoved, is
indicated by the eunuchs surrounding it in its representation as
the All-Mother.
This too exalting title is conferred upon it in order to indicate
that it is the source of things in the sense of being their
underlie: it is an approximate name chosen for a general
conception; there is no intention of suggesting a complete
parallel with motherhood to those not satisfied with a surface
impression but needing a precisely true presentment; by a remote
symbolism, the nearest they could find, they indicate that Matter
is sterile, not female to full effect, female in receptivity
only, not in pregnancy: this they accomplish by exhibiting Matter
as approached by what is neither female nor effectively male, but
castrated of that impregnating power which belongs only to the
unchangeably masculine.
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